We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and its take on the latest attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act:
It is hard to overstate the cruelty of the Graham-Cassidy bill. … [T]he formula for determining state grants would penalize the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the A.C.A. so as to provide more money to the 19 states that did not. This is a cynical attempt to win votes by taking money from generous states that are more likely to be governed by Democrats and giving some of it to representatives of stingier states that are more likely to elect Republicans. The block grants would disappear entirely in 2027, and it is by no means certain, given the pitched partisan battles over health care in recent years, that Congress would be inclined to reauthorize them.
Graham-Cassidy would further cripple Medicaid by putting a per-person cap on what the federal government spends on the program. Under current law, federal spending increases automatically to keep up with the rise in medical costs; a per-capita cap would leave governors, who are ultimately in charge of administering Medicaid, in the unenviable position of denying care to poor and older Americans.
David Faris at The Week:
It is not an exaggeration to say that Cassidy-Graham might be the most radioactive piece of legislation ever to be entertained by a governing majority in the United States. Like its predecessors, Cassidy-Graham would end ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion and roll back health care for millions of poor people. It would block grant insurance subsidies to the states, who could apply for waivers to key ObamaCare provisions like the requirement to cover people with pre-existing conditions, and create special funds just for the already-sick.
This proposal — quarantining the ill and the suffering in high-risk pools — is insanely evil, tremendously unpopular, and unworkable as a policy idea. The implications of this legislation are clear: It will throw millions out of the insurance system and gut critical Medicaid services. Any cost savings will be realized by either killing people or making sure they never see a doctor in the first place. But when millions of the uninsured start showing up in ER rooms again with illnesses they could have treated earlier, costing taxpayers billions and driving the cost curve back up to what it was before the Affordable Care Act was passed, Republican elites will realize they achieved nothing other than inflicting avoidable suffering on innocent people while turning the country decisively against them.
Andrew Desiderio and Sam Stein at The Daily Beast:
The Senate will not use regular order—an open process whereby amendments are offered—and will only hold rushed hearings. There won’t be a score from the Congressional Budget Office, either—at least not one that will measure how many people could lose coverage under the bill. The nonpartisan legislative scorekeeper said on Monday it would need several weeks to make such a determination, and the Senate GOP needs to get this done by the end of the month.
And yet, for all that, the bill remains on the doorstep of passage, with the White House now lobbying for support of Graham-Cassidy in the Senate, a congressional aide with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast.
Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine explains how dismantling Medicaid has long been a conservative dream:
Republicans have been seeking to “end Medicaid as we know it” and shift responsibility for the program and its costs to the states for most of the program’s existence. Ronald Reagan tried it in 1981, as did Newt Gingrich in 1995, and George W. Bush in 2003. The usual vehicle for proposing a gradual federal drawdown of Medicaid has been a “block grant,” which offers states reduced federal funding in exchange for greater (or total) flexibility in running the program.
Now, with the suddenness of a thunderstorm, the threat to Medicaid is back. Indeed, the Graham-Cassidy bill that represents the last-chance Republican initiative to get rid of Obamacare is heavily based on the idea of state flexibility in exchange for greatly reduced Medicaid — and tax credits to purchase Obamacare insurance — funding. Once Republican governors wake up to the possibility of this bill becoming law, their reaction could be influential.
Switching topics, Laurence H. Tribe and Ron Fein explain why a court should overturn the pardon of Joe Arpaio:
Is this use of the pardon power constitutional? In most cases, however controversial, courts should not second-guess the president’s use of the pardon power. But when the Constitution says that the president “shall have Power,” that does not mean unlimited power. It means power that is not inconsistent with other parts of the Constitution.
For example, the Constitution says “Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes,” but that doesn’t mean Congress can tax white people at a different rate than black people. The Constitution says the president “shall have Power” to make treaties, but that doesn’t mean he can make a treaty that abolishes freedom of speech.
The power to pardon is limited by the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” That guarantee requires that courts must be able to issue and enforce injunctions to stop constitutional violations by government officials. Otherwise, compliance with a court order would be optional.
Ryan Cooper dives into Steve Mnuchin’s corruption and how it’s all part of the current White House culture:
Since Trump took office, there have been a constant trickle of stories of him abusing his position as president to enrich himself, his family, and his businesses — from his daughter getting patents from China on the same day he met with the Chinese president, to charging the Secret Service to use his golf carts or an obscene rent in Trump Tower, to a revelation on Friday that the government had paid $1,092 for officials in the National Security Council to stay at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. Corruption is even being given official sanction. Last week it came out that the Office of Government Ethics (whose chief resigned in protest in July, saying the U.S. has become "close to a laughingstock" on ethics) will allow legal defense funds for aides caught up in the Russia investigation to accept anonymous donations from lobbyists.
And on a final note, here’s Eugene Robinson’s latest analysis of the political landscape:
[T]he election never should have been close enough for relatively minor voting shifts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to elect the likes of Trump. The election never should have been close enough for Clinton to lose Florida and barely eke out a win in Virginia. [...]
My view is that the traditional left-to-right, progressive-to-conservative, Democratic-to-Republican political axis that we’re all so familiar with is no longer a valid schematic of American political opinion. And I believe neither party has the foggiest idea what the new diagram looks like.
I don’t think Trump can see the new spectrum either, as evidenced by the way his approval ratings have plunged since his inauguration. But both he and Sanders deserve credit for seeing that the old model has outlived its usefulness.